


Fantastic Session

by Lady_Cleo



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Dreams, Dreams vs. Reality, F/M, Hannigram - Freeform, Inspired by Dreams, Therapy, i've got issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-25 15:28:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19748554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Cleo/pseuds/Lady_Cleo
Summary: It's 6pm on a Monday. It's early July, almost the height of summer. My name is Cleo, and I'm in a psychiatrist's office in Baltimore, Maryland.Except that I'm not.





	Fantastic Session

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for artisticmaze, who let me win and gave me the rare gift that led to this.

It's 6pm on a Monday. It's early July, almost the height of summer. My name is Cleo, and I'm in a psychiatrist's office in Baltimore, Maryland.

Except that I'm not.

Even with this grounding technique, I'm aware that I'm lucid dreaming. Because I'm not really in Maryland, and that isn't my name. (At least not all of it.) And this office isn't real, and this doctor - while very good at his job - is a fictional character. 

This isn't real. It can't be - but try telling my mind that right now.

The cuffs locked around my wrists attach to the arms of the chair I'm sitting in. It's one I know very well. A chair I know doesn't really belong to me. It doesn't belong to any of the Doctor's patients, save one. But for the moment, he's not here. And I am.

The leather of the seat has absorbed some of my body heat, reflecting it back onto me in a cradling warmth that's doing its best to calm me. Even given the bizarrity of the circumstances, I'm more relaxed than I probably would be with anyone else.

We're here to discuss a problem I've been avoiding. I know this because he knows this.

Or maybe it's the other way around.

As we begin, he moves in a smooth if restless circuit - from the chair opposite me with legs elegantly crossed, to perch on the edge of his desk rolling a small metal ornament between his palms, to appear on the mezzanine to my right ostensibly in search of a journal he wants. It's not uncomfortable to track his progress, though a little odd to watch him move in one direction and suddenly appear somewhere else like a cut in a film. I want to turn the chair to see him more head-on but the resultant fit my latent OCD would throw from pulling the chair out of its military neat alignment isn't worth it.

Besides, he'll be back soon.

The thought expressed and the deed is done. He's back across from me now, drawing, the movement of his pencil across the pad too fluid and encompassing of the page to be mere notation. I wonder what he sees. I wonder what he's documenting instead of technical jargon and academic vivisection. I wonder if I really want to know. I could find out easily enough, but something holds me back.

Besides the sterling handcuffs still caressing my skin, that is.

He's going to make me talk about it, going to hold up a mirror and ask me to confront the image there that I've been avoiding. He's going to demand the name I've assigned it, the one I can barely bring myself to think these days let alone say. Because she's merely the latest symptom, not the root cause. That is what we are here to determine, and move past. I'm meant to be pruned and treated and my roots exposed to the air so I can grow like a prized petunia and pardon my Fr... language but I really don't fucking want to. I didn't want to when I first began to notice the deeper underlying concern. I didn't want to when others suggested dealing with it, fixing it. Making it "all better," for all that that's not the point anyway, even if it could be a viable result.

It's just... introspective self-reflection of a subterranean issue? Ugh. I'd rather have a root canal from the _Marathon Man_ dentist. Without anesthesia.

But then I've always been the sort to break the bone of contention and suffer the resultant fracture rather than just remove it and start to properly heal.

Regardless of my reluctance to do so on the topic, we **are** going to talk, and I can't affect time here. _He_ could, a mere glance at the clock signifying we were at the end of our session. But I know he won't, the same way I know this is going to be as close to strictly professional as a man like Hannibal Lecter can get with someone like me. 

Another day, another time, maybe even if I'd just imagined myself tied to that infamous ladder instead of tenderly bound here, or pictured us in his kitchen, the sitting room in his Baltimore mini-mansion... the outcome might be different. It has been before, and with luck it will be again. He's a very conscientious and complimentary dream lover, not something I'm always lucky enough to have.

Even last time, naked and displayed when he was filleting me alive, I felt beautiful- laid out on that sinfully dark table like an altar, adorned with fruits and flowers, arrayed with a large leaf acting as a serving plate for the meat and surrounded by bones and antlers, a glass bowl of vibrant betas casting shimmering reflections across my flawless makeup, long blonde hair spilling in artfully arranged waves and curls to the edge like a waterfall runner.

It's not that I don't feel beautiful today - outfit neat as a pin and more expensive than anything I actually own, hair gleaming dully in the warm firelight, body perhaps more perfect than it would ever become in reality. It's just that that's not the point for today. I'm not here to focus on feeling better about myself, or bolstering my often lower-than-a-snail's-belly self-esteem. To be elevated by him, by my even transitory inclusion into such a dark and devastatingly beautiful world, can be as difficult for me to take as the mental paces he's putting me through now. Whenever I do allow it, it shows in my waking world, at least for a little while.

But now? I stifle a groan. We're here, and the same way I can almost _feel_ the slimy effluence of Franklyn's mucous-filled tissues on the glass surface to my left, or see the steadying grip Will once had on the ladder as he fought the swoon building at Dr Lecter's subtle advances, I can feel the professional element blending seamlessly into this solution. 

We're going to talk about it. Actually, we already are. He's dissecting me with subtle ineffable care, peeling back layers I'd normally have a white-knuckled grip on to keep from losing, the searing pain of the scalpel's razor edge as it slides through my psyche almost a kiss to me.

"Do we have to?" is not a question I'd bother voicing, not when I already know the answer. I can see the way that feathery brow - like mine, so pale as to almost appear nonexistent - would arc towards his impeccable hairline, imperceptibly wrinkling that smooth tan brow my lips ache to press against. That smoky smooth accent spilling from a half-quirked mouth might only be in my head as I read his answer in the arcane language of his physiognomy - _of course we must, and you well know why._

(Of course, just because I know that doesn't make me like it any better - and he understands that too.)

At some point in the discussion my eyes have slid closed. I only realize because they flutter open at the whisper-soft brush of a thumb over the curve of my cheek. My arms are still exactly as they'd been, despite the unnoticed removal of the cuffs that proved unnecessary to keep me in place.

I look up and feel my breath catch in a muted gasp. Oh his eyes are _exquisite_ , scanning my face as they are, a faint glint of amusement warming them like a candle through a frosted windowpane.

"I'm afraid our time is up." It could be my imagination, running away with me, but I fancy I hear a phantom thread of regret in his tone. It's times like these - little revelatory flashes that probably say more about me than they do the fictional characters occupying so much space in my mind - that make me wonder if he misses me when I'm gone. If any of them do, or if it's merely the absence of an attentive devotee who gives them life and grants them agency and freedom.

But that's a question for another time, if ever.

Now his hands skim on a cushion of air down my arms to take my own in his grip, gallantly helping me to stand. We're looking at one another, unblinking, this strange reflective ouroboros of examination. He could easily pull me in, wrap an arm secure as a band of steel across my back, turn our hands so that palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss and smoothly waltz us away. His hands could settle at my hips, the faint callouses of his thumbs somehow palpable through the fabric separating us as he rubs tiny circles over the hidden bones, fingertips curling possessively into the meat of my lower back as my hands settle over his shoulders, or cup the nape of his neck. We wouldn't even kiss, just stand there in a suspended pose, some tableau of romantic intent.

Instead he takes a few backward steps, drawing me along and I follow, perfectly matching his cadence. Then he turns, releasing one hand that tightens into a fist at my side, and leads me to the door, opening it and passing me through the gap that exists between hardwood and hardbody. His breath teases my skin like a playful breeze, and with a final squeeze he lets my other hand fall, turning to face me more fully now that he won't be wrapped up in himself to do so.

"I would say 'same time next week' _cara mia_ , but..."

There's a lot we're leaving unsaid. There is sadly no determination to my visits (which remain unaffected by the determined will I attempt to exert to get back here as often as I can), and while on a practical level I know he shares we both understand that that's probably for the best, it doesn't make the separation any less painful - at least for me. And I'll ignore it as best I can, knowing he'll be here helping others, or making the world a more beautiful place, or dreaming of his darling empath until I can return to him again.

Maybe next time we'll be a little less professional; maybe we won't. Maybe it will be like March when I ended up in Abigail's vaunted position- enfolded in his paternal embrace as he soothed and guided. It was one of the best night's sleep I'd had in weeks.

One time he was on the sofa, laid out, shoes off, head in my lap with my fingers in his hair as I read aloud from the Iliad\- in the original Greek, of course.

There are times we cook together and one glorious night we shared a kill. There are times we don't touch, or talk at all. On one especially memorable occasion, we didn't even move. For the better part of an hour, we held the pose of a classical painting - the lovers in _La Tempête_. When I woke up, I discovered it had rained and felt quite refreshed, despite the lingering stiffness between my shoulder blades.

Whatever the circumstances, I always get something out of our time together. And a little part of me - the one I'd call selfish or foolish or arrogant in my conscious moments, the one he encourages in me with the tender patience of a horticulturist coaxing an orchid to bloom because he believes (even when I don't) that I deserve to be happy and to be the governor of that happiness - thinks maybe he does too.

"Until next time, Hannibal."

His answering smile is only faintly tinged with melancholy as he eases the door shut between us.

_Until next time, my dear..._

**Author's Note:**

> So this came about because I won a GIF war on twitter and was gifted an extra day with my new shared imaginary psychiatrist. And then I went to sleep and had a dream therapy session. And it... actually helped. My life is weird.
> 
> Anyway, comments and kudos appreciated. Questions... will be considered.


End file.
